Entertainment

6 novel-writing tips from one of the publishing world's top editors

Lots of people have, at one point or another, harbored dreams of writing the next great novel. But where to begin? Luckily, MashReads went to the best in the business to ask for tips. Cheryl Klein, editor extraordinaire who helped shepherd some of the best YA and children's books to publishing and was the continuity editor for the last two Harry Potter books, came through with some advice. Read on for Klein's six tips for any would-be writer.

How do you write a great novel? As an executive editor for a major publisher in New York City, I think about this question every day as I work with my authors to develop and refine their books. (And I’ve just written a book myself — The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults — that delves deeply into the answers.) In brief, these six “Ps” should help you write a novel that satisfies and excites both you and readers:

1. Develop a Purpose.

What kind of story do you want to tell? What insights or experiences do you want to share with readers? How should the book feel, and how do you want readers to feel while reading it? These are all huge questions in writing, and you don’t have to know the answers from the very beginning; indeed, you’ll likely discover your answers as you write the first draft. But once you know them, that sense of purpose will create specific goals for you and the book to achieve. After that, every choice you face as a writer — from the point of view to the plot structure to the comma placement— you should make in service of those goals.

2. Create a Protagonist who wants something and goes after it.

A character’s desire is the very best possible plot engine for a novel, because it establishes stakes (Will our protagonist get what she wants?); action (What will she do to make it happen?); and narrative tension (Can she overcome the obstacles in her path to achieve her goal?). Desires should be positive goals that set up a course of action and allow the protagonist to drive the story: “I want to find out the secret of my father’s past” (good) vs. “I want my father to stop drinking” (bad, because the protagonist ultimately can’t control her father’s behavior). If she has more than one desire, that instantly creates even more delicious internal and external conflict, because she’ll then have to choose to pursue one desire over another, or choose among the people who represent those different desires to her.

3. Focus your Plot on conflicts that create choices and consequences.

As the protagonist chases after her desire, she should run into obstacles that create conflict, which can be as big as an antagonist or as small as a misdirected text message. The choices she makes in each of these conflicts will show us who she is, and the consequences of that choice should set up her next conflict and her next choice. This cycle will repeat over and over, with our protagonist learning more and more about herself and her world, until the novel arrives at the climax. There she should face her ultimate choices and consequences, and the book’s biggest conflict should be resolved.

4. Craft your Prose to suit your purpose.

Remember the goals you declared above? If you want your book to be scary (let’s say), the diction, syntax, and pacing of the book should likewise point toward scariness: language that relishes shadows and surprises; scenes unfolding slowly to heighten readers’ anticipation. As bestselling novelist Kristin Cashore puts it: “Match your style of writing to the feeling you wish the reader to feel."

5. Trust your Process.

Some writers create “terrible first drafts” and then edit the messes into coherency, while others revise every page as they go. Figure out a process that works for you, and then write regularly (it doesn’t have to be every day) until you get a first draft done. It’s 99 percent guaranteed that you will feel overwhelmed, worthless, talentless, stupid, stuck, or all of the above at some point in the writing. This is absolutely normal, and it usually comes from dishonesty, confusion, or fear: You aren’t telling the truth about your characters or their situation, you’ve either lost or never found a purpose for the novel, or you fear being judged, or you’re judging yourself in every line. Give yourself permission to write badly; you have plenty of time to revise this text, and nobody has to see the book unless you try to publish it! And so much as you can:

6. Aim for Pleasure.

In drafting, write for your own pleasure: Tell yourself the story you’ve always wanted to hear, with characters you adore, inhabiting a world you built from the ground up. In revising, edit for readers’ pleasure: Balance the plot, characterizations, pacing, and voice of the book into a whole that serves your purpose (paying particular attention to the element you like least), and make sure that readers have all the information they need for your big plot twist or heart-piercing insight to hit with just the right impact.

And with two more Ps — practice and persistence — you can become every writer’s favorite P: published!

Cheryl B. Klein is the author of The 'Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults' (W.W. Norton). By day, she’s the Executive Editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., where she served as the continuity editor for the last two books in the Harry Potter series. Please visit her website at www.cherylklein.com and her podcast at www.narrativebreakdown.com, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @chavelaque.

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